


The Hero's Heart

by softlybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:57:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlybarnes/pseuds/softlybarnes
Summary: Y/N, a softhearted dance instructor, takes Bucky Barnes, a fallen war hero, under her wing. Bucky’s fallen in love with her kind soul and giving nature but does she love him back?Modern AU





	The Hero's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a series but, I think I like it better as a one-shot. Let me know what you think.

“Steve,” Bucky sighs, staring at himself in the full length mirror beside their front door. “This is a really bad idea.”

The other man is paying Bucky no mind as he smooths a crease out of his shirt. “It’ll be fine, Buck.”

There’s a brief pause where Bucky considers locking himself in his bedroom. But then again Steve would probably just break down the door and drag him out of the apartment. “Does she know?”

“Know what?” Steve asks distractedly.

Bucky meets his own eyes in the mirror again. Dark circles hang beneath his eyes, his cheeks are sunken, his mouth a hard line. He doesn’t look like the sort of man you’d want to go on a date with. His eyes drift to his left shoulder. If it wasn’t apparent that he’s broken on the inside, it certainly is on the outside.

“I keep telling you that you can get a prosthetic.” Bucky flinches at the sound of his friend’s voice so close. “Tony knows someone over at the Vet Project that can-,”

“No,” he growls, mood suddenly gone from depressive to downright angry. “Let’s go get this fucking thing over with.” Bucky whips around suddenly, “And don’t ever set me up again. I’ll go this time because she shouldn’t have to be stood up but don’t think about doing this again.”

And, with his temper hot, he storms out of the apartment.

 

~

 

Steve had decided, mostly on his own, that it would be a good idea to set his angry, ex-soldier friend up on a date. He hadn’t told him anything about the woman. What she looked like or did as an occupation or any of her interests. Because saying any of that would have resulted in Bucky figuring out who this woman is.

“Steve!” She calls to him from across the crowded room. Bucky, already tense and on edge, beer bottle gripped tight in his hand, flinches and then looks up.

It’s her.

Panic surges through him, heart seizing in his chest.

“Oh hey! Bucky!”

Y/N presses into the small space between them at the bar, immediately flagging down a bartender. “How’s it going guys? I was worried when I didn’t see you at the last show.” She’s glancing between them, smiling widely, bouncing on her toes.

Bucky’s heart has stalled in his chest as he glances over her with fondness in his eyes. Steve is smirking, the little shit. But Bucky doesn’t care because Y/N is here, and she doesn’t seem to know that Steve’s set them up on a date. Which means it’s _not_ a date and therefore he can fucking _relax_.

“We had a little bit of a mishap that day,” Steve explains as the bartender smiles at Y/N and hands her a beer.

 _Mishap_ being that Bucky refused to leave the apartment, even for food. “Oh?”

“Yeah, Bucky was being an ass.”

She frowns and turns to him, “Didn’t want to see me huh? That’s cruel. I thought we were friends.”

“We are, darlin’,” he says easily, smiling gently. Y/N is an easy person to be around, unlike Steve who pesters him constantly about anything and everything. Unlike Sam who shows up to their apartment sometimes just to bother Bucky about going somewhere new. Unlike Clint who also showed up at seemingly random times, ate all of their food, and left once more. Unlike _everyone_ with whom he is forced to interact with.

Y/N is a small, happy flame. She could ask him to go skydiving in the middle of a tropical storm and he would agree. Being around her is just easier.

“I should hope so,” she says, putting a hand on her hip. “Steve told me this was a date.” _Annddd_ the panic comes surging back, heat flooding his cheeks. “But I said, ‘Steve, that is absolutely ridiculous. That Bucky Barnes is much too handsome for me.’ And do you know what? He agreed with me!”

The laughter bubbling past her lips calms him. “Thanks, Y/N.” He knows she means the whole thing as a compliment, and he’s also sure now that even though Steve had asked her, she hadn’t thought he was serious. “How are classes going?” He keeps his trap shut about how beautiful he thinks _she_ is.

“Not the same without you, James,” she chastises. “I was really disappointed when you didn’t come to the show.” She reaches out and puts a hand on his forearm. “Looked for the two of you the whole time I was dancing!” She slides her nails lightly along his skin before her hand disappears, tapping against the counter instead. A pleasured shiver runs up his spine.

Y/N teaches dance at a local studio. On a whim of his own Bucky had gone in one day, Steve questioning him but following all the same. And there she had been, spinning around the place as though it was the easiest, most natural thing in the world. Before he had gone to war, Bucky had been good at dancing and he decided right then that he wanted to give it another go.

So, he had started lessons and subsequently happened upon Y/N’s ballet class when he came in too early one chilly morning. She taught ballet only to children and Bucky had stood in her doorway smiling at the tiny dancers attempting to follow Y/N’s lead as sunshine waved over the worn wooden floors of her studio.

After that he started attending all of her classes, as an observer in all of them but his private lessons with the girl.  

He smiled a lot with Y/N and not so much with anyone else.

“I’m sure you and the girls did great,” Bucky says. The ballerinas often held charity dances and fundraisers, which Bucky and Steve usually attended happily.

Steve is still smirking at him over Y/N’s shoulder, looking very proud of himself. His grin only grows when he interrupts Y/N to say, “Sorry guys, looks like my date is here. You two have fun.”

Peggy has a shit-eating grin on her face too as she loops her arm through Steve’s. They cross the bar’s crowded floor and disappear out the door, leaving Bucky and Y/N very much alone. And even though he’s been alone with her plenty of times, it’s always been in the studio, never an unfamiliar social situation.

Tension forms a hard line against his spine. Panic that he might do or say the wrong thing erupts in his chest. But Y/N just waves goodbye to Steve and turns back to Bucky. “Well we missed you anyways. The girls were all asking after you, wanted to know where their friend was.”

“Friend?”

“Yeah! C’mon, Buck, you gotta know how lovable you are. Especially to those girls.” She huffs out a sigh and smiles again as the bartender walks by for what seems like the hundredth time. Bucky shifts a little so he might have a better view of the other man whose penchant for walking by their section of the bar is getting a little unnerving. “And it was for veterans too! You could have connected with someone.”

And that is precisely why he hadn’t gone. Veterans. They’re too much of a reminder. All they seem to want to do is share their war stories as their families stand by and say, ‘Oh he never talks to us about it! But a stranger! Now that’s perfectly-,’

Bucky doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t need anyone else’s memories merging with his own. He had seen enough horror and didn’t want anyone else’s. It’s almost hard to live with Steve who still longs for a career in the military.

“I know a really cute soldier girl I think you’d like.” Y/N waggles her eyebrows at him.

He shakes his head. The dancer before him really has no idea what she does to him, means to him. And suddenly he wishes this were a date. He wishes Y/N would lie her hand against his arm again. “Oh, Buck, c’mon. One date. Doesn’t have to be the soldier girl, although she cute and tough, just your type. But it can’t hurt! You’re a real catch. You can dance, thanks to me of course, and you’re always so polite, and you’ve proven to me more than once that chivalry is not dead.”

“No,” he says quietly, bringing his beer to his lips to take a swig. “I’m okay. Really Y/N.”

She holds up her hands in surrender. “Why’d you come out tonight? Just to meet me? I know bars aren’t usually your scene. You’re a better dancer, quiet and refined.”

“Ha ha,” he deadpans.

“I’m serious!” She says, voice jovial and excited. “At least about the chivalry thing.” Y/N hops up on Steve’s vacated seat and says, “Remember when you came to visit me at the market? And I know how you hate crowds so that in itself was a great act of courage. You came to visit and that rude man was there? And you gave him hell and I felt like you were my knight in shining armor.”

Because of course someone like Y/N would use her free time to run a market stall that sold flowers every Saturday.

Crimson creeps up his neck and over his cheeks. “Jesus, Y/N, you’d think I was somethin' special-,”

“Why’d you come out tonight soldier? What ruse did our dear Steven use?”

His face only grows hotter. “You,” he blurts out.

The smile on her face falters, “Me?”

Scrambling to backtrack he says, “Yeah. He said you’d be here and I did miss you at your show.” His fingers nervously peel the label back from the beer bottle as he feels bad about lying to her. “Thought maybe you’d want to see me.”

“’Course I do.” She smiles. “But only if you start coming back to class. _And_ to my shows. I’ve come to like you quite a lot you know.”

“Have you?” He asks softly.

“Yep! Best friends, you and me.”

A smile lights his face as he looks up to meet her eyes again. “I’m real glad I found you, doll.”

She giggles and her nose scrunches just a little. “I’m glad you did too. Even if you are broody and quiet and menacing at times,” she says as she glances down at her phone.

Before he can respond to that she stands and puts money down for both their drinks. He starts to protest, wondering at the same time where she might be leading them, before she puts her hand on his good shoulder. “Don’t worry about a thing. I know you haven’t found work yet. I have to go though. I’ll see you at class on Monday? Just me and you and that wooden floor under our feet?”

“Yeah,” he answers, dazed. Her fingers run a soothing pattern against his skin before they disappear. “Where do you have to go?”

As soon as he hears her answer, he wishes he wouldn’t have asked. “I’m meeting my boyfriend,” her voice holds its usual cheerfulness as a fissure runs through his heart. “Bye, sweetheart.” Soft lips meet his cheek as she presses a kiss there. She whirls away through the crowded bar, unknowingly leaving behind a broken heart.


End file.
